In the last few months, I took a minute to research a few topics I was curious about, one of those was leadership. I wanted to reflect on: What are the characteristics of a good leader? What happens when leadership goes awry? And, are leaders still needed in 2025?

What are the characteristics of a good leader?

In an ideal, rosy world, good leaders understand group dynamics and are able to guide them, forming a shared identity, establishing common norms to coordinate behaviour, and creating shared goals so that the entire group can move towards them.

Good leaders tend to be 'prototypical' of the group they represent, embodying what their group stands for while staying flexible. They reduce conflict, minimising the 'us vs them' thinking, which is related to our natural tendency to form groups with firm boundaries. Good leaders channel these natural tendencies towards cooperation rather than competition with other groups or between people.

They know that by being 'prototypical' of the group they represent, there is the risk to reinforce unbalanced group norms, so they watch out for them.

They create an environment where they enable the group they are representing to operate independently, so much so that they are mostly forgotten, so that people can get on with their lives, referring to them when needed.

Good leaders make themselves easily replaceable, to make sure that the overall group they represent can consistently experience balance and stability, or at least as much as possible.

What happens when leadership goes awry?

In social psychology terms, leaders fail when they stop being 'prototypical' of the group they are representing. I've seen this in yoga communities where spiritual leaders abused their power.

When this happens, people often abandon the entire community, not just the leader. This makes sense because research shows our individual identity is tied to our social identity, so when the leader fails, it feels like part of ourselves is failing too.

In this case, we tend to forget that groups are stronger than any individual leader. The community's shared values, rituals, and connections exist independently of who's in charge. When people leave the whole community because of one bad leader, they're giving up the real source of strength, which is the group itself.

The mistake is thinking the leader IS the community. But communities are built on shared identity and common goals. A leader can be replaced, but the power of group connection will always endure.

Are leaders still needed in 2025?

I wish I could say no, but I believe that in 2025 leaders are really much needed. In moments of uncertainty, we attempt to strengthen our identity by creating groups with clear boundaries and strong structure to reduce that uncertainty.

Without good leaders, people could gravitate towards extreme groups that offer simple answers to complex problems. We've seen this happen with political movements, online communities, and even in the workplace.

We naturally copy each other's behaviour and move in sync since we are naturally social creatures that rely a lot on collaboration, this is why we live in communities. But the same mechanisms that create cooperation can also create conflict when there's no proper guidance. Good leaders understand these psychological patterns and channel them towards positive outcomes.

Choose your leader wisely.

Photo by Tobias Mrzyk.
Parts of this manuscript were drafted with the assistance of AI language models (specifically, Claude 3.7, ChatGPT 4.0, Google Gemini 2.0). The author used AI as a tool to enhance clarity and organisation of ideas, generate initial drafts of certain sections, and assist with language refinement. All AI-generated content was reviewed, edited, and verified by the author. The author takes full responsibility for the content, arguments, analyses, and conclusions presented. This disclosure is made in the interest of transparency regarding emerging research practices.